(The Best Years in Life) In the mainstream media (and the popular consciousness programmed to consume it) defective genes are spoken about as if they were "disease time bombs," fatalistically programmed to go off inside of us, thanks to flawed genetic contributions of our ancestors. And yet, despite common misconceptions, monogenic diseases, or diseases that result from errors in the nucleotide sequence of a single gene are exceedingly rare. In fact, less than 1% of all diseases fall within this category..